Strakka Racing is determined to reignite its FIA World Endurance
Championship campaign by aiming for LMP1 Privateers’ victory at the 6
Hours of Spa-Francorchamps (3-4 May).
The Silverstone-based team endured a difficult opening race at
Silverstone, and despite showing incredible pace with its Honda
Performance Development ARX-03c early on in the dry, the car’s WEC debut
was cut short after two hours following an incident with a GT car.
Taking the positives of that courageous charge up from 30th on the
starting grid to 7th position in just six laps, the team’s all-British
driver line-up of Nick Leventis (London), Danny Watts (Buckingham) and
Jonny Kane (Thame) head to one of their favourite tracks, the
challenging 4.352 mile (7.004km) Spa-Francorchamps circuit, set in the
picturesque Ardennes countryside, with sights set on the top step of the
podium.
This year’s 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps will be the most intense WEC
meeting ever, with the normal three days of track action condensed into
two. A pair of 2-hour free practice sessions (starting at 09.00 and
14.30) and the two-driver/four lap aggregate qualifying session (19.30),
which has been extended to 30 minutes owing to the length of the
circuit, all take place on Friday 3 May. Race day (Saturday 4 May)
begins with warm-up at 09.00, before the rolling start at 14.30.
And as a precursor to the Le Mans 24 Hours (22/23 June), Spa is a doubly important race.
Nick Leventis: “There is a big hunger in the team to put our
championship campaign back on track. It didn’t start the way we’d hoped
for at Silverstone, but that doesn’t alter the ambition and drive
everyone at Strakka Racing has to make this a truly great season for the
team. We’re very optimistic heading to Spa. We know the circuit well
and we believe the new HPD ARX-03c will be very competitive there. The
changeable weather usually plays a big part in proceedings at Spa, and
this may also play into our favour as we were very strong there last
year in the wet and our 2013-spec car has incredible pace in the dry.
We’ve been busy since Silverstone with our Strakka Performance driver
development programme and have enjoyed another very good test at
Valencia, so we’re going to arrive at Spa ready to go and with a very
positive attitude.”
Jonny Kane: “I always look forward to racing at Spa, and as a team
we’ve always done well there. We did more dry running in the race at
Silverstone than we did in all our pre-season testing, so we learnt a
lot about our new car in those fifty-eight laps. The weather is getting
warmer, and whilst changeable conditions are part and parcel of a Spa
race weekend, all being well we should have less trouble keeping the
heat in the front tyres. The new two-day race forward shouldn’t be a
problem. I doubt we’ll have any mechanical issues, we very rarely do, so
we need to try and avoid any incidents out on track to make sure we
start the race having done as much running as possible around Spa. We
take a lot of positives from Silverstone into round two of the WEC, and
I’m really looking forward to it.”
Danny Watts: “The track layout at Spa should suit our HPD ARX-03c
down to the ground, so I’m confident we’ll have a good race weekend. The
weather’s normally very changeable, and whilst the new car was very
good straight out of the box in the dry, we’ve still got work to do to
unlock its potential in the wet. Having the free practice sessions and
qualifying in one day doesn’t really matter from a driver’s point of
view, because we just jump into the car and get on with it, but it will
make it a very long day for the technicians and engineers. We’ll have to
make sure we keep the car on the track and not sustain any damage,
because the timetable only allows for small changes to be done. Getting
the maximum amount of track time will be vital, not just for Spa, but
because the race is also an important part of our build up to Le Mans 24
Hours.”
Dan Walmsley, Strakka Racing Team Manager: “We were disappointed with
our result at Silverstone, but what happened in the race was out of our
control – so we head to Spa knowing we have a fast car and the ability
to deliver a good result and get our championship challenge back on
track. Like all Michelin runners, we’ll have a new evolution tyre at
Spa, which I’m confident our engineering team will quickly get on top of
in terms of performance and durability. We’d like to do more running in
the dry, but that’s not often the case at Spa – but come rain or shine,
we’re feeling positive and quietly confident ahead of race weekend.”
Motors TV will broadcast the entire race live, including the build up
and post-race celebrations, while Eurosport will broadcast the start
and last hour of the race live (please check TV guides for details).
Every WEC session from Spa will be broadcast live on radiolemans.com, with live timing and live race streaming on fiawec.com.
Many thanks to race fan Phillip Sleeman, who suggested this story’s headline on our team’s Twitter page: @StrakkaRacing